What are token unlocks?
From October 2024 to January 2025, tokens worth a total of nearly $15 billion will be unlocked, with a third of that amount coming in the first month of next year. Understanding and analyzing the timing of token releases allows us to predict the price movements of such assets.
The amount of $15 billion represents approximately 0.65% of the total crypto market capitalization according to CoinGecko data as of September 7, 2025. Early investors in crypto projects such as Sui, Aptos, Optimism, Arbitrum, Celestia, Worldcoin, and many others will at some point receive assets that were previously unavailable to them, which could theoretically put pressure on the market if sold all at once.
Token unlocking is the release of cryptocurrencies that were previously locked according to the economic model of the crypto project. These tokens may include assets intended for project developers, early users, and investors.
Starting in 2017, at the height of the ICO boom, thousands of projects appeared on the cryptocurrency market, raising millions of dollars for the development and promotion of their products, blockchain networks, and applications. The influx of new projects and investors into the market has led to increased competition. As a result, there is a need to develop rules necessary to improve the quality of the investment process for all market participants.
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ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is similar to an IPO or crowdfunding, but with greater risks and the possibility of greater profits, where the tokens sold are analogous to the shares of traditional companies.
In the absence of its own rules and metrics, the crypto market has partially adopted the tools of the stock markets, describing the mechanisms, rules, and clear conditions for project teams and investors. The main tool in terms of raising capital and bringing a project to the open market has become tokenomics, i.e., the economic model of the project.
Tokenomics is a set of rules describing the economic model of a project based on its native token, as well as clear boundaries for the issuance and distribution of tokens among project participants and/or investors.
In the traditional market, these boundaries for the distribution or issuance of shares can be determined by the level of the company's economic achievements, financial or production indicators. But in the crypto market, time has proven to be the most popular indicator. For example, for early investors, a vesting period (token lock-up) of 1 year can be set, or periodic token unlocking can be included, say, once a month for three years.
Types of unlocks
Depending on their goals and capabilities, project teams choose a convenient token unlock schedule, which includes two main types: linear and cliff unlocking.
Cliff is the period of time when tokens will be locked after listing on a crypto exchange. Cryptocurrency listing is the process of adding a token or coin to a trading platform.
Linear unlocking — this type of unlocking schedule involves unlocking a certain number of tokens in a linear fashion. It can be daily, weekly, monthly, or another schedule.
Cliff unlocking — this type of unlocking means that tokens are unlocked in a large “batch” at the same time.
In reality, projects rarely use just one option and include mixed types of unlocking in their tokenomics, where some participants are unlocked through cliff unlocking, while others are unlocked according to a linear schedule.
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